Residents Leave Cooling Centers In Cold

Government Draws Few Residents To Havens From Heat

On the doors of the Department of Human Services headquarters on Chicago's West Side, 4 1/2-inch-tall stenciled letters tell visitors that the building is closed Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

If that message isn't convincing enough, a notebook paper sign tacked to the front door of the 10 S. Kedzie Ave. offices on Sunday afternoon said, "Closed for to-day."

But the building, which serves as one of the city's largest cooling centers, was open on Sunday. In fact, it served as one of the city's few cooling centers open 24 hours a day.

While Sunday's noonday sun scorched the pavement outside the center, though, no heat-weary city residents were relaxing in the pleasantly chilled rooms inside.

As the heat wave's death toll climbed to at least 116 people in Cook County on Sunday, city officials grappled for the reason that turnout was so poor at the cooling centers, when so many people were without air conditioning, power and water.

"I was on Channel 5, 9, 32 and 66 talking about the cooling centers," said Daniel Alvarez Sr., the city's commissioner of human services. "I thought people were getting sick and tired of seeing my face."

Since Thursday, the information hot line of the mayor's office has received about 40,000 heat-related calls, Mayor Richard Daley said Sunday. In addition, some 2,000 people called the city's human services hot line to find out what help was available for those sweltering in homes filled with stagnant air, said Carmelo Vargas, the city's director of emergency services.

Operators told callers to go to neighborhood cooling centers-public buildings such as libraries, police stations, Park District offices and hospital waiting rooms-to escape the skyrocketing temperatures, Vargas said. City vans were available to pick up those who couldn't walk there, and caseworkers delivered food and water to the homebound, he said.

Many city hospital workers said their emergency rooms have been too bogged down with ailing people to have room for those simply seeking a blast of a.c.

"There hasn't been space," said Catherine Dunning, a patient care manager at Michael Reese Hospital, which intermittently lost air conditioning over the weekend. "The (emergency rooms) have been overcome with people who are coming in to be saved, not just coming to cool off."

The city's human services department couldn't open more 24-hour cooling centers Friday night or Saturday because the city's health department hadn't declared a state of emergency, human services spokesman Henry Locke said. But residents could have gone to area police headquarters, which are open all night, he said.

Tim Hadac, spokesman for the health department, said the bureaucratic tangle had little effect on the death toll because the centers that were open were scarcely used.

Those who needed the help most, especially senior citizens in depressed neighborhoods, were the least likely to ask for it, officials said.

"Some elderly people are very private," Alvarez said. "They were afraid, maybe, and that's the problem we had. These people who lock their doors and stay indoors-nobody knows about them."

At a Sunday news conference, Daley acknowledged that some senior citizens suffered more because they locked their doors and windows to ward off break-ins.